US President Donald Trump has said a “swift and lethal kinetic” US military strike killed the leader of Venezuela’s Tren de Aragua gang, Hector Rusthenford Guerrero Flores, the United States having earlier designated the organisation a terrorist group.
In a post on Truth Social cited by Ada Derana and originally reported by Sky News, Trump wrote that “Tren de Aragua terrorists no longer have safe haven in Venezuela or anywhere else and, under my leadership, we will find these vicious murderers and drug lords anytime, anyplace, and send them to the depths of hell where they belong.”
Guerrero Flores was charged in a New York federal court in December with racketeering conspiracy and other crimes, including lending support to terrorists, in offences that the US Department of Justice said stretched over more than a decade. The US State Department had previously offered rewards of up to US$5 million for information leading to his arrest.
Venezuelan authorities had not commented on the operation at the time of the Ada Derana report. The strike, if confirmed, would be the first publicly announced US targeted-kill action against a senior Tren de Aragua figure inside Venezuelan territory, escalating the Trump administration’s transnational crime enforcement framework that designated the gang a terrorist organisation earlier this cycle.
The Tren de Aragua emerged from a Venezuelan prison network and expanded into a transnational organisation operating across Latin American jurisdictions and the United States. Its US terrorism designation widened the legal toolkit available to American agencies — sanctions, asset seizures, and now, on Trump’s account, direct military action — against figures previously pursued only via federal criminal indictment.
Source: Trump says US strike has killed leader of Venezuelan gang — Ada Derana / Sky News, June 13.
